Natural gas line repaired, National Grid goes door to door to restore service

PAMELIA, New York (WWNY) - National Grid crews have completed repairs to a natural gas line that was damaged Monday in the town of Pamelia.

A company spokesman said the damage was caused by a third-party construction crew working on State Route 37.

Gas service was disconnected to about 230 customers. National Grid crews worked with commercial and industrial customers Monday evening to restore their service and were going door to door Tuesday to restore service to homes and to check on gas appliances.

One of the commercial customers is Willowbrook Golf Course. Its kitchen didn’t have natural gas for a time.

“Monday night’s our big wing night, so we had to cancel that. It cost us some money, but, you know, what are you gonna do? That’s just the way things are sometimes,” said Doug McDavitt, Willowbrook PGA professional. “At midnight they were purging the lines and such. So I guess it could have been a lot worse.”

National Grid says more than 100 crews from as far as Syracuse and Utica spent Tuesday going house-to-house turning the gas they had turned off the day before back on.

“It’s a little bit more time-consuming than an electrical outage, where we get up on the polls, route power, and lightbulbs turn back on,” said Jared Paventi, National Grid spokesperson.

If a customer isn’t there when crews arrive, they’ll leave details on how customers can call to schedule an appointment to restore service.

“We will come back to the house, free of charge, and do that inspection for them,” said Paventi.

As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Paventi said natural gas had been restored to about 180 homes.

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